Journal Number 94
February 2005

THE COLUMN

Caladenia Surprises
Part 1: Te Paki Unclassified Taxa Collection
By Eric Scanlen

The two year saga of collecting unnamed orchids from Te Paki, came to near fulfilment on 2 Nov 04. Ngati Kuri had approved - too late last year - for specimens to go to Canberra for DNA analysis provided they were all returned. The principle of not exporting native plants, to our loss and other's advantage, was all important.

27 Oct 04 Leita Chrystal, Ian Townsend and Brian Tyler from Levin, came via the Nematoceras (Corybas) "viridis" (whiskers) site at Horopito to the Column's Papakura place for the night.

28 Oct 04 All rendezvoused with Ernie Corbett and Bev Woolley at Allan & Colleen Ducker's, Silverdale. A stop for coffee and an orchid hunt at Top-o-the-Dome, caught some late Pterostylis graminea still in full bloom; so late! P. banksii was only in bud amongst legions of Acianthus sinclairii in seed. Picking up Al Blumhardt at Whangarei and Graeme Jane catching us up in his new 4WD Suzuki in the Maungataniwhas - at the Nematoceras (Corybas) rivularis site - completed the NZNOG field party.

The N. rivularis s.s. main crop had moved downstream and spread, after floods had modified this tributary of the Tapapa Stream in the Mangamuka Gorge. This is the originally described, northernmost, and latest flowering species of the aggregate of ±15 taxa. Several digi cameras and the Column's Nikon caught some in full flower. A call at DoC HQ, Kaitaia followed, to collect the keys and a signed copy of Brian Molloy's permit-to-collect from Janeen Collings, DoC's Threatened Plant Ranger.

Sweetwater, where Doug McCrae had first found Caladenia aff. bartlettii [J78:20,263] in the 1980s, turned on the rain as the party surveyed the unlikely present landscape for this taxon, of lush pasture grass with pampas and wattle on some road berms. On to Waitiki Landing for takeaway fish-'n-chips and our pre-ordered groceries, before bedding down to the call of moreporks, at DoC's shearer's quarters, after a long day.

29 Oct 04 Ed Smith, DoC's Field Officer at Te Paki Office, was our minder for Cape Reinga's one-time Rubbish Dump where three specimens of the fairly prevalent Microtis arenaria were collected from Gael Donaghy's find [J77:22,27] after suitable photography in situ.

One pale and only half open Caladenia "nitida rosea" (Petalochilus aff. fuscatus) showed promise of more to come and got the cameras clicking.

A determined hunt for Thelymitra "tholinigra" [J85:10,15] at its site of two years ago, drew a blank. None of the putative hybrids showed this year either, although numerous other T. aff. longifolia were opening in the warm overcast. The irksome here-one-year-gone-for-several syndrome, could explain why the likes of this orchid, T. "bee" and other raries are so difficult to track down. Probably they are hibernating as tubers awaiting conditions more suitable to their liking.

What did show up was a tall and late flowering Caladenia (Petalochilus) bartlettii, lying down a bank by fresh rabbit scratchings with its tuber bitten off and gone for lunch.

Later, the Shenstone Block yielded 3 specimens from its large colony of HB Matthews' Singularybas (Corybas) "aestivalis" from Margaret Menzies' find. Two were in seed capsule. They are delightfully unsullied here by any hybridism with S. oblongus. [J90:12,16].

The Column hurried the day's collection of 6 specimens (2 taxa) to Brian via the Waitiki Landing's post-box before 3:30pm as the rain descended and kept all the Thelymitra shut for the day. Allen and Al displayed their cooking prowess to everyone's hearty appreciation that night.

30 Oct 04 All headed to the Caladenia "speckles" site in the Shenstone Block via Allan's Track and Pink Track but found only a few leaves. However, C. "nitida rosea" across the track had a plentiful colony with several fat buds showing at 10 am cuppa time.

The yellow flowered Thelymitra imberbis (carnea) site, mid Shenstone Track, had flowered again this year but was finished. Under the gorse at Fri 2 track junction, were a few finished Plumatochilos (Pterostylis) tasmanicum but on Allan's Track, only juvenile leaf rosettes had shown up in the gorse there. In these old sand hills, P. tasmanicum is only found under gorse; which orchids usually avoid.

Bev spotted 4 spent, black, Thelymitra matthewsii in a new area at the eastern extreme of Sat 1 iron pan but the lunch site at Sat 2 had no T. matthewsii visible, as Anne Fraser had warned. This extensive ridge of iron pan (naturally cemented sand crust) had previously had many specimens scattered around the Hakea sericea fringes. What a strange disappearance?

Incidentally, T. matthewsii was declared extinct for about 70 years but Northland Conservancy no longer list it as endangered, due no doubt to the hundreds of plants ferreted out by Anne and other NZNOG members in the unlikely looking desert-like, iron-pan areas.

Calochilus aff. herbaceus were in all the usual sites, i.e. dappled shade at hollows in the track. One or two opening flowers got the cameras clicking as did one or two plonkers, as Graeme referred to white and pink Thelymitra aff. longifolia.

The homeward trek was via Anne's T. matthewsii white markers, like a mini graveyard at Fri 1, in the tumbled blocks of iron pan on the north facing, sand-crater wall. There were also scores of plant markers at Fri 2 crater due, Anne thinks, to disturbance afforded by her moving around the site taking measurements etc. Could this disturbance be merely compressing damp sand grains around the virtually invisible seeds and thus helping them to germinate?

Caladenia "chloroleuca" [J72:27] in a new site amongst the kanuka, finally displayed a three flowered specimen (Photo right) where the top bud had the peduncle curled right around the second and open flower's pedicel. The open flower's midlobe had HB Matthews' distinctive "3 long, linear calli on each side and a glandular fringe to the tip. . . lateral lobes and column broadly barred pink-purple."

The lower floret was spent. Just a mutant, thought the Column so it had its portrait made after the offending peduncle had been uncoiled but was never collected.

There were plenty of similar twin flowered ones which Brian later chose to deposit in CHR Herbarium. Possibly too close, for DNA check, to its relative, greenish white C. minor (chlorostyla) which were the most abundant orchid of the day.

The one-time large clump of Thelymitra "sky" was now reduced to three plants due no doubt to shade-out by the maturing kanuka. One floret on a swelling ovary, had pale grey-blue tepals where blues and whites have been seen before [J78:35].

DoC Kaitaia have been requested, in writing, to thin the kanuka in the vicinity to let more dappled sunlight onto this beleaguered colony of unique, if undescribed orchids.

Several Corybas cheesemanii with white scapes to 212mm long, vied with three Anzybas (Corybas) rotundifolius, one with the champion 280mm scape; from such a tiny orchid!

The 10.5km hike around every track in the Shenstone Block except Cheeseman's, with Ian turning every log for bugs and a peripitus, found some of the aging field party weary at the Kanuka Restaurant that night. But the staff especially upgraded service to à la carte for the occasion. Allan's orchid videos that evening gave us a wide range of open flowers, close up and slowly turning, to make up for a day of too many disappointments.

31 Oct 04 Ed was on time at 8am for the Scott Point trip, via paddocks and unlocked gates this time, saving both the Ninety Mile Beach trip and climbing Jacobs Ladder. Warm sun had the plonkers opening at 9am to the clicking of shutters at last.

In Caladenia Alley, Leita turned up a solitary, and tiny Caladenia "speckles" (Photo right) which had a bug-eaten midlobe visible in the viewfinder so the Column turned to Allan who had spotted a sizeable colony nearby, on a dry bank to the NZ Walkway. Two beautiful flowers stood back to back in a most awkward place under stunted tea-tree but the photographers managed their contortions without trampling the other plants.
Photo right is a rarely seen rear view.

Then the Column cut them off flush with the ground and placed them in his Watties sauce bottle full of water. This was Bruce Irwin's solution to Caladenia-collapse, sometimes suffered in transport. It felt like beheading two adored pets but this was the whole raison d'être for the trip.

That first specimen in Caladenia Alley had by now vanished despite the whole field party scouring the place for it but, three specimens were the bare minimum for species ID; one for the herbarium, one for DNA check and one for dissection for inner detailed drawings. Fortunately another showed itself by the Te Hapua Road that evening, 20mm from the grader cut, to make up the necessary three.

Caladenia (Petalochilus) bartlettii were the commonest pinks this season; about 3 weeks late! The trip had been timed late especially to miss them and the many putative hybrids with C. "nitida rosea" which had upset the 2002 field trip. Not one hybrid showed this time! Nothing is certain with orchid trip planning.

Three glorious orchid pink plonkers caught the photographers' eyes. One made a picture (Photo right) in a dry ridge-top site.

Thelymitra aff. longifolia "stunted" [J86:10 fig. 2] with stiff, V section leaves coiled and twisted, were in full healthy flower in the sandy track-side. Three got into the Watties bottle.

Some similar but taller specimens, also with V section leaves but untwisted, gave pause. Possibly this taxon sizes itself to suit the conditions?

One looked suitable for Max Gibbs' requested glam orchid shot, for a NZ Geographic article, but not with picked flowers! So Bev obligingly lay in the sand gazing at the little white orchid whilst the Column rigged his camera and flash. Great, except the shot later showed up too many personal blemishes for Bev's liking and Max thought the model should have been more blurred for effect. Oh bother!

Lunch was taken especially at the 133m Scott Point top spot where Bruce had spotted the bud of Petalochilus saccatus Rogers on 29 Sep 97 [J65:14]. Ernie had seen Caladenia buds on 10 Oct 02 [J86:11] through a port-hole in the gale flattened tea-tree so this had to be the time. But no one could see a sign of Caladenia on this gale blasted landscape until eagle eyed Ernie came to the rescue again, and spotted some in the wind-furrows of the tea-tree cushions.

The party took new heart and started finding Caladenia buds sheltering in like sites all around. The Column opened one advanced bud with bated breath - it was only dratted Caladenia "nitida rosea"! Finding no Petalochilus saccatus or P. calyciformis was a disappointment but those many unopened buds could still bring forth specimens. Another year perhaps.

Bev found two tall double header C. "nitida rosea" in seed, in a sheltered hollow. The double headers found on this trip were all tall and in seed; single flowered specimens were shorter and just starting to open. No three headers were seen but two [J77:25; 82:7] have been recorded previously.

Note that the similar C. "speckles" has only 1 flower, and 1 basal marginal callus, not 3 or 4. Plants are always smaller that C. "nitida rosea" and it hasn't been reported south of Kaimaumau. Otherwise they are quite similar.

On the return trek, Allan spotted two Caladenia aff. bartlettii (Photo right) flowering in quite separate sites, both on dry banks by the NZ Walkway. This has the obtuse sepals of C. bartlettii but, the lateral sepals turn under and the more triangular midlobe has only one marginal callus per side.

Those few reported to date comprise; Doug McCrae's from Sweetwater, (pers. comm. Brian Molloy) Doreen Abraham's from Caladenia Track, Shenstone Block [J78:20,263 never seen there since] and two ultra tiny and deformed from Fri 1 track. [J86:13]

This taxon wasn't on the collection list and there were too few to collect anyway.

1 Nov 04 Janeen got from Kaitaia to Te Paki by 8 am to let Ed go on leave, then went with the Rubbish Dump Hill party, despite the Column having washed the Carona, especially! Never mind, 3 Caladenia "nitida rosea" got bottled from the Shenstone Track and the speckles site on pink track; so did Caladenia "chloroleuca" with Allan's help later in the day.

Al, Brian and the Column met the others at Pandora Gate at 11:30 and drove up to the Radar Bush Track for a scattered few, spectacular - to orchid buffs - Thelymitra spp. T. "rough leaf" (Photo right) was open on a side spur, the same orchid pink as the 3 plonkers of yesterday (cf Fig. 5) but with their distinct columns and chromosome count of 6n=84 (pers. comm. Dan Hatch) not the 2n=26 of T. longifolia.

Also open were T. aemula, a showy white plonker lying on the moss, unable to hold its mass of white flowers up in the shade; another "tired one" perhaps? and a fine pink plonker nearby. Pterostylis agathicola still had a few open flowers in the kauri but Singularybas oblongus couldn't be found; scoured off the stream banks in recent floods it seems.

Tues. 2 Nov 04 Home time already. The specimens in the well taped down Watties bottle of water, posted in Kaitaia, were received by Brian in good nick a couple of days later although some had lost a little water-soluble colour, he declared.

Alec Kennedy from Kohukohu, another 3-D orchid enthusiast, had us touring his pieces of trust forest before the dust of our arrival had settled.

A huge Microtis unifolia, like those at the Spirits Bay cannon [J65:18,19], with a clump of deeply coloured but closed, Thelymitra aff pauciflora, set the stage. A beautiful Drymoanthus adversus, open and at camera height caused a photographic queue. Leaves were minutely burgundy speckled, unlike the large burgundy spots of D. flavus [J91:21]. Flowers were greenish with tiny burgundy speckles, a burgundy back to the column and comparatively large burgundy blobs inside the ends of the lateral petals only. The earliest flower had faded to pink, as they do. Seven dry stems spoke of 8 years' flowering on a modest 3 leaved plant.

Some Singularybas (Corybas) oblongus were still open (so late!) and some rounded leaved, unflowered specimens looked very much like S. "aestivalis". Swathes of Earina mucronata (spent) and E. aestivalis (in bud) led us to Ernie's find, new to Alec's bush, of Chiloglottis cornuta, rare in the north if not at Iwitahi. Ernie and Alec had been at school together at Waitara, 50 years ago. Is this a small world or is it?

Cutting to the last orchid part of the trip, Allan stopped us at a mown berm between Okaihau and Ohaeawai to see his closed and tiny, applicants for Thelymitra colensoi. Numerous specimens still had immature buds which have never been reported open. Rose pink columns and split yellow post anther lobes were similar to those at Forestry Research, Whakarewarewa [J92:15].

Albert had another look a month later, and reported that buds still appeared to be immature and columns varied somewhat. In all probability, this taxon gets no attention because it is insignificant and the flowers rarely open. More information please.